If you have been following my posts for the last month (or talked to me about what I have been up to recently) you will not be surprised I have another post about the ease of use/awesome documentation when using Bitnami.

I still am 100% impressed with the documentation – as each example I have followed has worked flawlessly (not something I can say much…especially after spending an evening trying to fix my PS3 vs. play it a few nights ago).

What is Varnish?

Varnish Cache is a web application accelerator also known as a caching HTTP reverse proxy. You install it in front of any server that speaks HTTP and configure it to cache the contents. Varnish Cache is really, really fast. It typically speeds up delivery with a factor of 300 – 1000x, depending on your architecture.

Ever curious how something like Redmine, DreamFactory, or a number of other tools, content management systems, etc looked like/worked? If you did – but did not have the time to download the code, configure your server, etc – Bitnami to the rescue (again!).

Within minutes, you can have a server up and running with everything you need, configured and ready to go with in a few painless steps:

Check it out for an hour, and the decide if the application suits your needs.

If the application is what you need – you can easily install it using Bitnami. If it is not what you were looking for – the demo will expire and you can try something else. Either way – it makes test driving applications painless.

The more I work with Bitnami, the more I absolutely love it. After migrating a number of applications over to my server – I realized I could benefit from using Memcache. I decided to do a quick look at the documentation for Bitnami and found exactly what I needed. Within 5 minutes I had Memcache up and running.

Of course after I did that – I also took a closer look to see what other PHP modules were available – and installed a few more. What I love most? The documentation is great and everything I try actually works – no exceptions – on the first attempt.

Still not sold? Not only are there a ton of PHP modules available, there are a ton of “stacks” available to download/use with ease. Example: Monit, PHP Frameworks like CodeIgniter, Apache Solr, Varnish, etc. Make sure you put this on your “to check out” list and then thank me later!